Trump Lauds Job Statistics He Once Impugned – Ep. 234

* I guess you could say a good jobs report is all in the eye of the beholder
* And when it comes to President Trump's eyes, he is now beholding an excellent jobs report
* Whereas a candidate, similar reports were described by Trump as phony, a hoax
* I have a lot more sympathy for Candidate Trump than I do for President Trump
* Now President Trump is trying to pretend that the jobs numbers that he used to be so critical of
* Are now reflecting what a great job he is doing as President
* When there's really no difference between the metrics of this job report and the ones we got under Obama
* With probably one exception
* And that is in the number we got is better than expected, though not as good as some had hoped, given the very strong ADP number we got earlier
* We got a surge in manufacturing jobs there was also a bump in construction jobs
* But I am very suspicious of the manufacturing jobs
* I know a lot of American manufacturers are really trying to curry favor with Donald Trump early in his Presidency
* And this could all be some Trump-related window dressing
* This is a long trend of hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs
* And I don't think this one blip necessarily means that trend has changed
* I wouldn't get too excited; it is a good thing to be creating goods-producing jobs, manufacturing jobs
* I'm not criticizing that
* But the question is, is it sustainable, is it real, or is it simply some smoke and mirrors
* Orchestrated selectively to make Trump look better early on
* So certain companies can get what they want from Trump when it comes to tax reform, or other issues where these companies may have a vested interest
* Let me go over the actual February Non-Farm Payroll numbers:
* The consensus was 200,000 jobs; 227,000 was the number created in January
* Most of that was prior to Trump becoming President, though subsequent to his election
* So we did 227,000 jobs in January and they actually revised that up to 238,000 jobs
* We did 235,000 in February, so actually slightly less, at least based on the initial estimate of jobs created in the prior month
* Unemployment rate did fall slightly from 4.8% to 4.7% and labor force participation inched up from 62.9% to 63% as more Americans re-enter the labor force
* Average hourly earnings, though, which were expected to rise .3% only rose .2%
* But they did revise the prior month from .1% .2%
* So I guess that was about a push
* .2% is not much of an increase in wages, especially when prices are rising 2-3 times as fast
* Remember January CPI was up .6 - triple the rate that wages are up
* The average work week remained the same at 34.4%
* As I said, what was a little bit different, though was the complexion of the jobs
* We did create jobs in manufacturing, for a change